This template is used on 3,200,000+ pages, which is ≈164583% of all pages.3,035,000 of the 198 pages in mainspace that qualify as articles transclude infoboxes (1532828%). To avoid large-scale disruption and unnecessary server load, any changes to it should first be tested in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can then be added to this page in a single edit. Please consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

This template is intended as a meta template: a template used for constructing other templates. Note: In general, it is not meant for use directly in an article, but can be used on a one-off basis if required. Help:Infobox contains an introduction about the recommended content and design of infoboxes; Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes contains additional style guidelines. See WP:List of infoboxes and Category:Infobox templates for lists of prepared topic-specific infoboxes.

Usage

Usage is similar to {{navbox}}, but with an additional distinction. Each row on the table can contain either a header, or a label/data pair, or just a data cell. These are mutually exclusive states so if you define a row with both a header and a label/data pair, the label/data pair is ignored.

To insert an image somewhere other than at the top of the infobox, or to insert freeform data, use a row with only a data field.

Optional control parameters

name

If this parameter is present, "view/discuss/edit" links will be added to the bottom of the infobox, pointing to the named page. You may use the value {{subst:PAGENAME}}; however this is rarely what you want, because it will send users clicking these links in an infobox in an article to the template code rather than the data in the infobox that they probably want to change.

child

See the Embedding section for details. If this is set to "yes", this child infobox should be titled but have no name parameter. This parameter is empty by default, set it to "yes" to activate it.

subbox

See the Subboxes section for details. If this is set to "yes", this subbox should be titled but have no name parameter. This parameter is empty by default, set to "yes" to activate it. It has no effect if the child parameter is also set to "yes".

decat

If this is set to "yes", the current page will not be autocategorized in a maintenance category when the generated infobox has some problems or no visible data section. Leave empty by default or set to "yes" to activate it.

Content parameters

Title

There are two different ways to put a title on an infobox. One contains the title inside the infobox's border in the uppermost cell of the table, the other puts as a caption it on top of the table. You can use both of them together if you like, or just one or the other, or even neither (though this is not recommended):

title

Text to put in the caption over the top of the table (or as section header before the whole content of this table, if this is a child infobox). For accessibility reasons, this is the most recommended alternative.

above

Text to put within the uppermost cell of the table.

subheader(n)

additional title fields which fit below {{{title}}} and {{{above}}}, but before images.

Illustration images

images to display at the top of the template. Use full image syntax, for example [[File:example.png|200px|alt=Example alt text]]. Image is centered by default. See WP:ALT for more on alt text.

caption(n)

Text to put underneath the images.

Main data

header(n)

Text to use as a header in row n.

label(n)

Text to use as a label in row n.

data(n)

Text to display as data in row n.

Note: for any given value for (n), not all combinations of parameters are permitted. The presence of a |header(n)= will cause the corresponding |data(n)= (and |rowclass(n)=|label(n)=, see below) to be ignored; the absence of a |data(n)= will cause the corresponding |label(n)= to be ignored. Valid combinations for any single row are:

|class(n)=|header(n)=

|rowclass(n)=|class(n)=|data(n)=

|rowclass(n)=|label(n)=|class(n)=|data(n)=

See the rendering of header4, label4, and data4 in the Examples section below.

Number ranges

To allow flexibility when the layout of an infobox is changed, it may be helpful when developing an infobox to use non-contiguous numbers for header and label/data rows. Parameters for new rows can then be inserted in future without having to renumber existing parameters. For example:

Making data fields optional

A row with a label but no data is not displayed. This allows for the easy creation of optional infobox content rows. To make a row optional use a parameter that defaults to an empty string, like so:

| label5 = Population
| data5 = {{{population|}}}

This way if an article doesn't define the population parameter in its infobox the row won't be displayed.

For more complex fields with pre-formatted contents that would still be present even if the parameter wasn't set, you can wrap it all in an "#if" statement to make the whole thing vanish when the parameter is not used. For instance, the "#if" statement in the following example reads "#if:the parameter mass has been supplied |then display it, followed by 'kg'":

header1 will be shown if any of item1, item2, or item3 is defined. If none of the three parameters are defined the header won't be shown and no empty row appears before the next static content. The trick to this is that the "#if" returns false only if there is nothing whatsoever in the conditional section, so only if all three of item1, item2 and item3 are undefined will the if statement fail.

Note that such trick may be sometimes very complex to test if there are many data items whose value depends on complex tests (or when a data row is generated by a recursive invokation of this template as a subbox). Ideally, the Lua module supporting this template should now support a new way to make each header row autohideable by detecting if there is at least one non-empty data row after that header row (a parameter like "autohide header1 = yes", for example, would remove the need to perform the "#if" test so that we can just to define "header1 = Optional header"),

Footer

below

Text to put in the bottom cell. The bottom cell is intended for footnotes, see-also, and other such information.

Presentation parameters

Italic titles

Titles of articles with infoboxes may be made italic, in line with WP:ITALICTITLE, by passing the italic title parameter.

Turn on italic titles by passing |italic title={{{italic title|}}} from the infobox.

Turn off by default (notably because only Latin script may be safely rendered in this style and italic may be needed to distinguish foreign language from local English language only in that script, but would be difficult to read for other scripts) but allow some instances to be made italic by passing |italic title={{{italic title|no}}}

Do not make any titles italic by not passing the parameter at all.

CSS styling

bodystyle

Applies to the infobox table as a whole

titlestyle

Applies only to the title caption. Adding a background color is usually inadvisable since the text is rendered "outside" the infobox.

abovestyle

Applies only to the "above" cell at the top. The default style has font-size:125%; since this cell is usually used for a title, if you want to use the above cell for regular-sized text include "font-size:100%;" in the abovestyle.

imagestyle

Applies to the cell the image is in. This includes the text of the image caption, but you should set text properties with captionstyle instead of imagestyle in case the caption is moved out of this cell in the future.

captionstyle

Applies to the text of the image caption.

rowstyle(n)

This parameter is inserted into the style attribute for the specified row.

headerstyle

Applies to all header cells

labelstyle

Applies to all label cells

datastyle

Applies to all data cells

belowstyle

Applies only to the below cell

HTML classes and microformats

bodyclass

This parameter is inserted into the class attribute for the infobox as a whole.

titleclass

This parameter is inserted into the class attribute for the infobox's title caption.

aboveclass

This parameter is inserted into the class attribute for the infobox's above cell.

subheaderrowclass(n)

This parameter is inserted into the class attribute for the complete table row the subheader is on.

subheaderclass(n)

This parameter is inserted into the class attribute for the infobox's subheader.

imagerowclass(n)

These parameters are inserted into the class attribute for the complete table row their respective image is on.

imageclass

This parameter is inserted into the class attribute for the image.

rowclass(n)

This parameter is inserted into the class attribute for the specified row including the label and data cells.

class(n)

This parameter is inserted into the class attribute for the data cell of the specified row. If there's no data cell it has no effect.

belowclass

This parameter is inserted into the class attribute for the infobox's below cell.

This template supports the addition of microformat information. This is done by adding "class" attributes to various data cells, indicating what kind of information is contained within. Multiple class names may be specified, separated by spaces, some of them being used as selectors for custom styling according to a project policy or to the skin selected in user preferences, others beig used for microformats.

To flag an infobox as containing hCard information, for example, add the following parameter:

| bodyclass = vcard

And for each row containing a data cell that's part of the vcard, add a corresponding class parameter:

| class1 = fn
| class2 = org
| class3 = tel

...and so forth. "above" and "title" can also be given classes, since these are usually used to display the name of the subject of the infobox.

Examples

Notice how the row doesn't appear in the displayed infobox when a label is defined without an accompanying data cell, and how all of them are displayed when a header is defined on the same row as a data cell. Also notice that subheaders are not bold by default like the headers used to split the main data section, because this role is meant to be for the above cell :

Embedding

One infobox template can be embedded into another using the |child= parameter or the |embed= parameter. This feature can be used to create a modular infobox, or to create better-defined logical sections. Long ago, it was necessary to use embedding in order to create infoboxes with more than 99 rows; but nowadays there's no limit to the number of rows that can be defined in a single instance of {{infobox}}.

Note, in the examples above, the child infobox is placed in a data field, not a header field. Notice that the section subheadings are not in bold font if bolding is not explicitly specified. To obtain bold section headings, place the child infobox in a header field (but not in a label field because it would not be displayed!), either using

Subboxes

An alternative method for embedding is to use |subbox=yes, which removes the outer border from the infobox, but preserves the interior structure. One feature of this approach is that the parent and child boxes need not have the same structure, and the label and data fields are not aligned between the parent and child boxes because they are not in the same parent table.

Note that the default padding of the parent data cell containing each subbox is still visible, so the subboxes are slightly narrower than the parent box and there's a higher vertical spacing between standard cells of the parent box than between cells of distinct subboxes.

Full blank syntax

(Note: there is no limit to the number of possible rows; only 20 are given below since infoboxes larger than that will be relatively rare. Just extend the numbering as needed. The microformat "class" parameters are also omitted as they are not commonly used.)

Alternatively, you can add the following code to your common.js or into a browser user script that is executed by an extension like Greasemonkey:

$('.infobox').hide();

Be aware that although, per WP:Manual of Style/Infoboxes, all information in an infobox ideally should also be found in the main body of an article, there isn't perfect compliance with this guideline. For example, the full taxonomic hierarchy in {{Taxobox}}, and the OMIM and other medical database codes of {{Infobox disease}} are often not found in the main article content. The infobox is also often the location of the most significant, even only, image in an article.

Porting to other MediaWikis

The infobox template requires the Scribunto extension and HTMLTidy to be installed. It may not work with other MediaWikis. WikiProject Transwiki has a version of this template that has been modified to work on other MediaWikis.